The present invention relates to packaging and shipping containers, and more particularly to heavy duty containers for packaging and shipping mining and construction tools.
It will be appreciated that such tools used in the mining and construction industries must be realtively heavy and dense articles to effectively cut through rock and rock-like substances. Accordingly, the containers for their packaging and shipping must be of heavy duty construction to withstand the stresses and strains encountered in transporting the tools. In an attempt to provide the required strength, packaging containers in common use today are generally made either from metal or a heavy duty plastic. It has been found, however, that despite the relatively high strength of the materials used to form known containers, said containers still exhibit undesirable weaknesses.
A significant weakness associated with known packaging containers relates to the fact that they generally open on their longest dimension to facilitate manufacture. More particularly, it has been found that the internal stresses and external strains to which the loaded container is subjected during transit and handling act on the container so as to distort it along its loading, i.e. longest dimension. At the very least, this distortion makes it difficult to open or close the container. Of course, when the stresses are sufficiently great, the container fails resulting in loss of contents. It will be noted that this distortion and/or failure is found both in metal and plastic containers.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved packaging container for mining and construction tools which is relatively lightweight, yet very resistant to distortion or failure.